Opening Day was this weekend, an event that’s capitalized in our house and not to be missed for such trifles as moving day or being sick. This is what we live for; we work our butts off for nine months a year in order to play even harder for these next three. It’s not only opening day for deer around here, but also for bear, so there was much fun to be had. We lucked out and had it to ourselves kid-wise, so I took off work a little early and Junior took off from fixing up the house a little early.

Saturday morning started out with a disappointment when we saw that there was logging going on in Junior’s favorite place to deer hunt. There wasn’t last week when we were up there squirrel hunting, but this weekend it was all ripped up. Besides, it was absolutely full of people. So we eavesdropped on the bear hunting channel, and figured out that they were just down the road from us. That was all the excuse we needed to switch tracks, and off with the hounds we went.

The dogs are fresh and excited so they strike at any sign of a bear. Sometimes we can find a track, and sometimes not. Sometimes you turn them out to start one, and it trickles off to nothing and they sheepishly come back to the truck all, “Oops, sorry, false alarm.” They’ll get the hang of it again in a week or two, but on this particular weekend, it took a few starts like that to get an actual race.

Once the race looked like a real one, Junior and I went around to the other side of the ridge to listen over there. On the way, we passed three other sets of hound rigs, with nine dogs out potentially where ours were. It was like Grand Central Station for houndsmen over there; there were more rigs than deer hunters. It seems that someone got the word out that we’d had a real good year last year, and people were coming in from all over the country to take our spot, nevermind that they didn’t know the terrain or the roads, or even basic courtesy.

Those extra hounds burned us too. When we got to the tree, there were three dogs from some other pack, and they were all barking up the wrong tree. As near as we can figure out, the two packs heard each other and moved towards each other, each thinking the other set had something. Or else these other dogs were complete idiots, which is also possible. Whichever, there was no bear anywhere near there. We did get a small bear later in the afternoon.

The next morning, we put the dogs on a track right around daylight. They gave us an outstanding race; we saw them cross the road a couple of times; they ran for miles and miles. We had a hard time locating them when the race moved into an area without accessible roads, so when we stopped hearing them and a few came out, we thought it was all over.

Four dogs were still missing though, so before we left to get home and move, Junior and I headed up to where we turned out to see if any had come back up that way. We’re not a ton of use without a tracking receiver, but they often go back to where they started so it was worth a shot. We spent a little while hollering and honking the horn when we got word on the radio that the signal had been picked up elsewhere and for us to come on back down.

We’d just turned the truck around and started down the road when skipping across the road went a deer, the first one we’d seen all day. We both recognized that it was a legal buck at the same time. I was the only one with a deer rifle on me, so while Junior got out to watch where it went, I jacked a round into the chamber. The deer was not terribly alarmed but was still going the other way, so Junior whistled at him. Deer are curious, which is probably why he hadn’t bugged out when we were honking the horn, so when he heard the whistle, he slowed down, stopped, and then turned his head to see what we were.

That was the end of that deer, as my favorite deer rifle doesn’t miss. It was a good clean kill too; he was dead before we got down to him. We took our pictures (which are still in the camera, see: moving) and Junior dragged him up to the truck while I filled out my tag. We’d no sooned got him up there when word came over the radio that they’d found the last four dogs, but they weren’t just running; they were treed, and all the way on the other side of the country. All of our rigs were spread across 20 or 30 miles, so we tossed the buck in the back of the truck and hauled ass to get down there and help them. Especially with a bear that keeps coming out of the tree, we had to get those dogs off him one way or another. They were exhausted, but that doesn’t stop a good bear dog.

 

The tree was a cluster, as the bear came out again, but at least it was after the first kids there got the dogs tied up. Junior didn’t make it to the tree in time to see the bear, and I didn’t even get to the tree. I’d taken off just a hair after him so I could get the truck locked up, and by the time I caught up to him, he was stopped at a really steep spot that wasn’t worth trying to get me up, so I went back down to the truck. 

By the time I got back down there, Senior (he was right behind us on the road) had gutted out my deer so he didn’t spoil. We tried to listen to the story over the radio while other friends trickled in, but eventually the men and dogs came back and that was good enough. This chase had brought us back down to my camp, so we could pick up the stuff we needed to take from that. Then back to Junior’s camp where Senior volunteered to butcher the deer out after it hung for a day, and on home to start moving after thirteen hours of frantic activity. We were never so glad to see the bed as we were last night.

It was a good start to the season though. I got the first buck in both camps, although there was another one taken later that evening. We got to a tree and saw a good race, and incidentally took four quail and a squirrel on side hunts, which are on the agenda for dinner tonight if I can find the frying pan. It will take us a couple of trips to get back into the swing of this always-on thing on the weekend, especially on those with the kids, but this is our thing, after all. We can’t call ourselves hunters if we don’t actually go hunting, and hunt we did this weekend, and hard.